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Carregando... Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japande Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
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With startling revelations, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of World War II in the Pacific. By fully integrating the three key actors in the story--the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan--Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective. From April 1945, when Stalin broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and Harry Truman assumed the presidency, to the final Soviet military actions against Japan, Hasegawa brings to light the real reasons Japan surrendered. From Washington to Moscow to Tokyo and back again, he shows us a high-stakes diplomatic game as Truman and Stalin sought to outmaneuver each other in forcing Japan's surrender; as Stalin dangled mediation offers to Japan while secretly preparing to fight in the Pacific; as Tokyo peace advocates desperately tried to stave off a war party determined to mount a last-ditch defense; and as the Americans struggled to balance their competing interests of ending the war with Japan and preventing the Soviets from expanding into the Pacific. Authoritative and engrossing, Racing the Enemy puts the final days of World War II into a whole new light. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)940.532452History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War IIClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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The main problem here is the Hasegawa's moralizing over the use of nuclear weapons. Though he claims to repudiate the revisionists who formulated the initial arguments against the American first use of nuclear weapons, it does seem clear that Hasegawa has a certain sympathy with their position. It would be better to accept the atomic bomb as not so much an innovation, but as the final culmination of total war. To me it always seemed academic to make a distinction between dying as a result of an air raid by several hundred bombers as opposed to an attack by a single machine, at least in the context of World War II.
I also find the depiction of Pres. Truman offered to be something of a caricature. Hasegawa sees a man motivated by a sense of honor seeking satisfaction for the attack on Pearl Harbor, while at the same time being a victim of the governing machine, and unable to stop the momentum for use of atomic weapons. This portrait seems anachronistic to me, as if Hasegawa is disappointed that Truman could not rise about the tenor of his time.
One also gets the sense that the depiction Hasegawa provides of the Japanese and Soviet leadership somehow comes off as being more rational, as though there was something evil about an American government following the dictates of realpolitik. That there was still a war going on sometimes get lost in Hasegawa's apparent moral revulsion. It's hard to imagine any American president recoiling from first use of atomic weapons when they appeared to offer a solution to multiple problems. This does raise the question of why the American leadership would consider the new weapon that stunning of an advance, when already waging aerial warfare in an indiscriminate manner; one supposes that hope springs eternal. This being the case I'm perfectly willing to take seriously Hasegawa's argument that the Soviet intervention is more important than American analysts are usually willing to credit.
Finally, the real question to be dealt with here is the inadequacy of the American diplomacy of the time towards the issue of war termination. At a certain point it becomes obvious that the lack of a clear channel to the Japanese government was a real hindrance in terms of bringing the slaughter to an end, a point that Hasegawa fails to treat in as analytic a fashion as needed and where a legitimate critique can be made of the Truman Administration; military victory is not enough. This also then becomes an indictment of FDR's style of governance, and his failure to prepare Truman to take on the role of commander in chief; though you can argue that would be an anachronistic position to take. As has been said, the graveyards are filled with indispensable men. ( )